Denis Kearney, 1847–1907
Denis Kearney, 1847–1907
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Editor’s Note:
Denis Kearney was born on February 1, 1847. In commemoration of his birthday, we are reprinting the following essay. On the same topic, see Raymond Wolters’ superb essay “Race War on the Pacific Coast” (PDF),
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Part 3 of 4
An Appraisal
While Terry wrote numerous poems, and a play, The Making of a Madman,[1] his only published work, in both prose and verse, was The Shadow. Because the shooting of Joe Kum Yung has overshadowed all else about Terry, his cogent analysis of imperialism and capitalism expressed in The Shadow is little known.
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Part 2 of 4
“Insanity”
In days of old, when men were bold,
And Honour held its sway,
When’er a comrade fought for Truth,
We all stood staunch beside him.
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Lionel Terry, 1873–1952, self-portrait
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Part 1 of 4
Lionel Terry, 1873–1952, self-portrait
When the “New Zealander”[1] Lionel Terry is recalled at all it is generally by liberals and Leftists, who judge him to be nothing more than a psychotic racist murderer. (more…)
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“There never was a good biography of a good novelist,” F. Scott Fitzgerald once observed. “He is too many people, if he’s any good.” This dictum holds particularly true in the case of Jack London (1876–1916). For biographers and critics as well, he is the most elusive of subjects. As a person, as a writer, and most of all as a man of ideas, he continually takes on different and sharply contrasting forms.
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Jack London was born John Griffith Chaney in San Francisco on January 12, 1876. An adventurer and Jack of all trades in his youth, London achieved fame and fortune as a fiction writer and journalist. But he never forgot his working class roots and remained a life-long advocate of workers’ rights, unionism, and revolutionary socialism. (See his essay “What Life Means to Me.”)
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I was born in the working-class. Early I discovered enthusiasm, ambition, and ideals; and to satisfy these became the problem of my child-life. My environment was crude and rough and raw. I had no outlook, but an uplook rather. My place in society was at the bottom. Here life offered nothing but sordidness and wretchedness, both of the flesh and the spirit; for here flesh and spirit were alike starved and tormented.
Hinton Rowan Helper, 1829–1909
Hinton Rowan Helper, 1829–1909
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For most readers having a nodding acquaintance with American history, the term “abolitionist” conjures up a vision of a sentimental housewife like Harriet Beecher Stowe, a homicidal psychopath in the mold of John Brown, or some stone-faced Puritan negrophile. (more…)